Friday, November 04, 2011

Whole Foods Coming to HoCo?

After forty four years, Town Center may finally be getting a grocery store. Multiple informed sources have confirmed that Whole Foods Market is in the final stages of negotiations with the Howard Hughes Corporation to lease the main floor of the former Rouse Company headquarters building to become the organic grocers ninth Maryland store and first in Howard County. The other three floors of the re purposed building will likely become a mix of office and other retail.

Town Center is the only Columbia village that has never had a grocery store. Out of the ten villages in the planned community, it has the fewest number of dwelling units. That is about to change. With the redevelopment process now underway, Town Center will eventually become one of the largest villages in Columbia, second only to Long Reach in terms of total residential units.

Snagging Whole Foods for Town Center would be a huge coup for the developer and should act as a catalyst for additional redevelopment around Lake Kittamaqundi.

The former Rouse headquarters is a four story 127,000 square foot office building designed by Frank Gehry. It was completed in 1974 and remained the headquarters of Columbia’s original developer until The Rouse Company merged with General Growth Properties in 2004. Today, only a small portion of the building is occupied by its current owners, Howard Hughes, the new entity that was created by GGP and spun off when the company emerged from bankruptcy a year ago. While the Columbia mall remains part of General Growth, much of the undeveloped land in Town Center and several buildings at the lakefront, became part of Howard Hughes.

As part of the redevelopment legislation, the developer agreed to preserve the iconic lakefront building.
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14 comments:

  1. TrevorNovember 04, 2011 8:53 AM

    Thanks for the scoop. I'm really excited about this. I've been saying for some time that Columbia is ripe for a Whole Foods, especially as downtown Columbia gets developed. This should spur more growth, developement, and, dare I say it, vibrancy in town center.

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  2. P90 NoirNovember 04, 2011 9:05 AM

    This is very exciting news! Hopefully Howard Hughes can find a way to preserve/revitalize the event space on the second floor of the building. With Whole Foods on site, it could be a great location for special events.

    And yes, this is exactly what we need to spur more investment in downtown. Now if only we could add an indoor concert facility to the Merriweather grounds or somewhere else downtown.

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  3. AnonymousNovember 04, 2011 2:56 PM

    Does anyone know the square footage of that first floor? If the entire building is 127,000sf I can't imagine that this store will be as big as the new mega Whole Foods that you see coming up. But I guess any WF is better than no WF.

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  4. BclassNovember 04, 2011 7:30 PM

    Great news! Whole Foods has the best cheese shop, even compared to Wegmans. A great, and late, addition to Howard County.

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  5. AnonymousNovember 04, 2011 8:30 PM

    I posted the previous question about square footage. I drove by the building this afternoon. I figure the main floor is about 40-50,000 sf. What's puzzling is how they'll handle deliveries considering the terraced nature of the building. I noticed that the lower floor of the building (which is only visible from the lakefront) is accessible by a side road. If WF leases that lower floor as well it would make for an ideal loading dock location and stockroom. It also has a good number of parking spaces - good for an employee lot, perhaps.

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  6. JenNovember 05, 2011 9:13 AM

    Now if only we could change the law banning the sale of wine at grocery stores :) Whole Foods has an awesome selection of wine in VA and DC!

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  7. AnonymousNovember 05, 2011 7:24 PM

    What about parking? The lots are always full during the week. Could be a hassle...

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  8. sobohonNovember 05, 2011 10:36 PM

    Wow, I thought that lakefront area was designated open space. Wasn’t that Rouse’s original vision?

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  9. AnonymousNovember 05, 2011 11:05 PM

    Former Secretary of the Cabinet and Governor Wanna-be Ken Ulman will surely take full credit for this, just like he single-handedly saved Merriweather!

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  10. TomNovember 06, 2011 7:37 PM

    Are the Wilde Lake folks going to try to stop this?

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  11. KarenNovember 07, 2011 11:03 AM

    Good news for Columbia -- both for the Whole Foods, and also that this historically significant building is preserved.

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  12. ho.co.poDecember 16, 2011 10:51 AM

    It's not showing up on their development page :o(

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  13. KirstyCatJanuary 17, 2012 11:12 PM

    What would that do to the nature of the Lakefront? How would traffic be affected? It doesn't seem like this would be viable. Traffic at Xmas time is already horrific on LPP & Gov. Warfield. As a Town Center resident, I'd LOVE it, but the traffic seems like a problem.

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  14. AnonymousMarch 04, 2012 7:39 AM

    Any more news on WF coming to Columbia?

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